


Snowfall

by SenkoWakimarin



Category: The Punisher (TV 2017)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-21
Updated: 2018-12-21
Packaged: 2019-09-24 04:59:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,618
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17094371
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SenkoWakimarin/pseuds/SenkoWakimarin
Summary: Frank's relationship with the holidays is, to say the least, a little complicated. Then again, so is his relationship with everything else.





	Snowfall

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mr-finch (soubriquet)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/soubriquet/gifts).



Christmas had never been much to Frank.

Even as a child, the excitement he’d known he was meant to feel for the holiday was muted. It was something to endure, family and noise and the press of too many bodies in too small a space, feigned excitement for material items he hadn’t asked for but that his parents could afford. Dad was softer on Christmas, Ma tired but all smiles: that he’d liked, but the rest of it… 

Maria had loved Christmas. The lights, the joy, getting to surprise people with something. Frank had felt like a Grinch their first Christmas together, asking what the point of wrapping a present for a baby not yet even twelve months old was. They’d fought, and when he’d vented frustration to Bill, he’d been laughed at. 

“It’s the most wonderful time of the year, dumbass,” Billy had jeered, dodging easily when Frank swung at him, half-hearted. “God, go home and apologize. Grovel at her feet for being an insensitive prick, and finish wrapping your kid’s presents.”

She’d already wrapped everything by the time he trudged home, but he begged forgiveness anyway. And there had been a sort of spark, a dull, weird joy in helping baby Frankie pull the wrapping off toys he grabbed up with pudgy baby hands and shook or threw, babbling in the tiny delight of infants everywhere.

Some Christmases he was on deployment. He got their cards and their packages and treasured the thought they spared him, missed them, but it was easier, not being home. Standing on the fringes of their seasonal delight and pretending to be part of it. It made him feel like a shitty dad, a shitty husband, possibly just a shitty person.

With them gone, there was nothing to December but echoes. 

When David invited him for dinner, he didn’t answer at first. Like, ‘ignored the question, changed topics, stewed over it for a couple days’ didn’t answer. 

They’ve known each other a couple years now. Seen the best and worst of each other. David had let him go, but made no pretense about the delight he found in Frank coming back, sometime in April. Let him go, let him come back, like he’d been worth missing. Mostly, he saw the Liebermans on weekends, dividing his weekdays between the job that paid rent and the job that gave him a reason to keep living.

He’d done Hanukkah with them this year. It had been… different. He didn’t know the holiday, not really. It meant nothing to him, but clearly meant something to David to have him there. “It’s actually not a big holiday at all,” David had explained, the second day, laughing as they sat in the cold and drank wine in the yard, because sometimes just sitting in the house was too much for Frank. David could tell, when it got that way. “It’s not supposed to be like Christmas or whatever, you know? But it’s closest to Christmas by, like, the calendar, right, so it’s pretty much the only holiday non-Jews know.”

“Passover,” Frank had answered, mostly because being contrary with David was a habit.

“Yeah but why do you know that one?” David had replied with a grin, looking at Frank over the rim of his wine glass. 

All Frank had been able to do was angle his head up at the night sky, huffing quietly. “Easter,” he’d allowed after a moment, and smiled faintly when David laughed, carrying on his mostly one-sided conversation about the ways of the world, the weirdness of holidays and how they came to have different meanings.

He liked that David could carry the conversation for both of them. Liked that David didn’t take his silence for him ignoring him. That had been one fight that never ended with Maria; god help him if he didn’t ‘carry his own weight’ in their conversations. Sarah got like that, sometimes, though her brand of anger was stony cold versus Maria’s fire. 

David understands better. Frank likes listening, likes noise he’s not required to react to. Silence is disturbing, but talking is difficult; better if he can just filter the conversation and par his responses down to the shortest possible additions. 

He likes too that when David rises from his deck chair, wine glass empty, he bends to take Frank’s glass without needing to ask, and kisses him in passing, both meaningless affection and very pointed. It’s been a long year, and David took whatever liberties were afforded to him. 

Christmas Eve, it snows. Frank is out punching some dipshit channer with a ‘88’ tattoo who’d been behind a string of murders in Queens, and the snow just keeps falling. The cold hurts his hands; his skin dries out enough that his knuckles split twice as fast when he starts laying into the Nazi asshole. Normally he’d have shot the asshole and just been done with it, but the bastard got off on beating women to death, and Frank had a bend for irony.

Was that irony?

He’s not sure. What he is sure of is that by the time he’s rinsing his hands off in kitchen of the murdering puke’s shitty ‘hideout’, the snow has started to stick to the ground. It’s been cold plenty of days since the leaves started falling, but the one snow storm they’d had had melted off in a matter of a few days. This, with the heavy fat flakes falling so thick he had to squint to make out the building across the street, was exactly the kind of snow that settled in for the long run. 

Made travel, even short distance travel, real shitty. 

He shoves his hands in his pockets and trudges home, thinking about if he should bother to call David to say he wasn’t coming tomorrow. Muttered a string of curses when he thought of the gifts he’d wrapped for Leo and Zach. He wasn’t good at wrapping, but David had said with a little grin that they ‘did Christmas, with a tree and everything’, so Frank imagined presents had been in order. 

Was it better to call, promise to come another day? Again, he’s not sure, and walking into the blowing snow isn’t helping him figure it out any either. 

By the time he makes it back to his building, halfway fucking across town, his thoughts have narrowed down to two things.

Get out of cold, wet clothes.

Get warm.

That’s it, that’s really all he cares about, hands so numb and cold he can barely get his fingers under his window to yank the damn thing open. He almost falls right back outside onto the damn fire escape when David’s voice speaks up from the dark. As it is, he manages to keep his balance, hand twitching toward the gun holstered at the small of his back, but not fully reaching for it.

Damn good self control for a man who’s home had been broken into, which he grunts out in rough tones.

“I have a key, though,” David says, hovering in the dark between where Frank stands and the foot of the bed. “You gave me a key. That’s not breaking in, that’s just… visiting.”

Frank shuts the window and starts shrugging out of his clothes as he moves toward the bathroom. He’s tired. His hands ache. He’s cold.

“The fuck are you doing here?” He asks with the safety of the bathroom door between them as he strips out of soaked dark wash jeans, aiming to take a hot shower and at least alleviate one of his troubles. “Thought I was coming to you tomorrow.”

He can hear David shuffling around out in the main room of the studio apartment, even over the sound of the water chugging through the pipes as he twists the shower on. It takes him a second to track the path David’s footsteps follow and realize that David’s picking up his discarded clothes. 

Different people speak their love in different ways. They speak it differently to different partners, too. David spoke his ‘I love yous’ in actions, little acts of kindness. Getting Sarah’s gas because he knew she hated doing it. Cooking for Frank, picking shit up off the floor so he didn’t have to do it later. Frank understands that, finds it makes him feel real squirrely inside, mostly because he doesn’t know how to express himself the same way. Sure as shit not vocally.

He scrubs himself down and then stands under the hot water for a few minutes, trying to soak the heat into his bones so he can carry it with him. The apartment isn’t well insulated, tends to be chilly especially at night. Frank has blankets, so he doesn’t tend to care too much, but with David here he has a feeling he’s not going to be able to just get in bed and bundle up.

It’s not until he’s out of the shower and drying off that he realizes he didn’t bring anything to change into. All he’s got is a towel and a pair of damp jeans with soaked cuffs, which have left melted ice on the floor. He tilts his head at the ceiling and curses, wrapping the towel firmly around his waist, securing it, and grabbing his jeans off the floor.

David doesn’t whistle at him when he steps out of the bathroom, which is an admirable show of restraint for him, but Frank just scowls and moves to dump the jeans in the hamper basket, pointedly not looking at the other man. He can tell the exact moment when David extends him the same courtesy and finds something else to stare at. 

There’s enough low light from the street that he doesn’t bother turning on any lamps, wonders why David’s just been sitting in the dark before remember the idiot had probably been sitting in the dark playing with his phone.

“I didn’t expect you’d go out tonight,” he says, and Frank pauses with his hand on a fresh pair of boxers, squints, and then proceeds in gathering his clothes. “I thought since the weather said it was gonna snow tonight, I could drive you back home.”

Frank’s eyes roll toward the ceiling and he tries very hard not to sigh. His knuckles hurt. So does his chest, and he doesn’t think bandages or a couple aspirins are going to help with the latter. 

“Look, I can tell you’re not super, uh,  _ thrilled _ about this time of year,” David says, because David shutting up is a rare blessing bestowed pretty much exclusively when Frank  _ wants _ him to talk. “And if it’s gonna be too much, I’ll drive back tonight by myself, make excuses, whatever. You know you don’t  _ have _ to do anything. I came because I wanted to see you.”

_ Jesus _ .

Sometimes David makes Frank feel like a real asshole, and it’s rarely intentional. At least, Frank doesn’t think it’s intentional. Who says ‘I wanted to see you’ to make someone else feel like an asshole?

“In this weather you’re gonna skid into a ditch and freeze if I let you go by yourself.”

David makes a noise, something between derision and fond amusement. “And what, you gotta come with me so you can keep me warm?”

Another eye roll at the ceiling, Frank muttering to himself as he yanks his sweater on. David is looking at him again, and he wants to say something smart but what exactly do you say to that kind of shit? He ends up just turning and looking at David, arms spreading in a mild ‘what do you want from me?’ gesture, which makes David laugh.

“I’m serious, Frank. If the best gift I can give you is an out on the whole Christmas gig, then I’m happy to do it.” 

David gives. He does things for the people he loves, like picking up Frank’s discarded, icy clothes, wiping up the melted wet from the floor, putting all his shit away in the dark while Frank showers. Making the people he loves happy makes him happy, and Frank gets that. 

“It ain’t,” he says, feeling like a useless jackass standing on the opposite end of the space as David. David just puts his head to one side, and Frank sighs, sitting on the bed to put his boots on, the ‘nice’ pair, the pair that’ve never kicked their way past any corpses. 

He looks at David, still standing there by the back of the couch, coat off, hair half tamed by the beanie hat he’s wearing. How can he be clear that he’s not doing this because it’s an obligation. That as awkward and as difficult as this time of year is for him, he  _ wants _ to be with David, with his family.

“Putcher damn coat on. It’ll be dawn before we ever get to the house if you keep standing there staring at nothing.”

They make it down the stairs, the gifts Frank had gotten for the Liebermans in a trash bag because they wouldn’t fit proper in the empty duffle he’d had. The streetlight outside the front of the building has gone out, making the street feel even darker, but with all the snow, still falling thick, it’s not so bad. Snow reflects even the lowest light, so between the streetlights that are working and the little bitts of passing traffic, the walk to where David’s parked his car isn’t terrible.

“You realize this means you’re gonna have to drive me back, yeah,” Frank says, listening to the crunch of the snow underfoot and the soft laugh he gets from David. 

“Yeah,” he replies, and Frank recognizes that slightly teasing tone. It means David has something planned, and knowing David as he does, it’s likely something perverse. “When did you think I was gonna give you your present, huh?”

“Christ.”

“Hey, if you don’t want it, don’t open it. I’ll still drive you home.”

Frank isn’t sure exactly what possesses him to shove David up against the driver side door of his car, but he does, and he likes the little gasp he gets from David as his back hits cold metal. Bundled up as he is, it’s probably not too bad, but the snow has blown in just such a way that it’s coated this side of the car, so David is framed in it. Frank takes a moment to enjoy the sight, snowflakes caught in David’s hair glinting like stars as they melt, his cheeks red from the cold, eyes wide. He presses his hand against David’s chest, and thinks that even through all the layers between them, he can feel his heartbeat. 

He kisses David, pressing harder into him, fully aware that they’re right on the street where anyone could see, not caring. He grips hard to the bag of gifts and to the front of David’s coat, shoves up tight against him, and does as thorough a job of stealing his breath as he can. 

And in the snow, falling thick around them, on an empty street a block and a half from his apartment, the moment feels special, private. David settles his hands on Frank, not pushing or pulling, just touching, and kisses back, leaning into it. The snow falls, and it falls and it falls, and there’s nothing else in the world but them.

Soon they will have to part, get in the car just to keep warm, drive to the house and sleep a bare few hours before its time to open gifts and do the whole rest of the Christmas routine. But for now, he’s got David and the snow, he feels warm in the cold, and it’s nice.

It’s nice.


End file.
